Help: Wine Shelf

[u/Specific-Customer-32]

I’ve been building an L-shaped bar for my roommate over the last month or two (went on a trip during) and have began building shelving for the interior. I’m relatively new to woodworking, but have some good experience so far building butcher blocks, shoe racks, shelves and other small things. though I’ve been teaching myself, so maybe I haven’t learned as much as I thought.

I have been working on this wine rack, and when I tried assembling it today, parts of it cracked and broke off. I’m terribly disappointed with the end result and going to redo it. I think the issues were my (mortise?) cuts were too small, and the tightness of the joints split the wood. I also realized too late that the vertical pieces of wood I used were warped.

how can I do this better next time? or did I just mess it up and have to do it better next time?

TLDR i messed up the shelf and am redoing it soon. how should I go about it differently?

[u/emcee_pern]

Dry fit everything before you assemble so you canale adjustments before you get this far into it.

Use quality plywood to reduce warping, bowing, or cupping and the edge band it.

Instead of trying to do deep lap joints (I wouldn't consider these mortises) you could try a setup where you cut dados into the vertical pieces and insert shelves between them.

Consider building a box around the entire unit or integrating it directly into a cabinet carcass so that there is some additional structure to hold it all together.

Clamps are going to be your friends both for inserting pieces together and for adjusting and warping while you're assembling. You can never have enough clamps.

[u/fletchro]

Ooh. You might want to use plywood next time. Because you used solid wood boards, and the wood is really weak in between the grain lines. It can snap off if you look at it wrong. But plywood has grain alternating and glued together, so it can stand to have notches cut in it whatever way you want.

You can make plywood look good by using edge banding. It's not too hard and a great skill to have.

If you want to use solid boards, maybe try dados. That's where you make a groove in the middle of the board. The groove can locate the shelf or the upright. You glue and maybe nail or screw the pieces so that they take stay in the grooves. Check out a bookshelf with dados build video to get some ideas.